With less than four months until the election, the race for a parliamentary majority is heating up, but what if neither side can hit that mark? Sam Sachdeva looks at the unlikely (but not impossible) alternatives
In 2020, the biggest unknown on election night wasn’t whether Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party could earn a second term in power, but whether it would need any friends to do so.
Ultimately securing just over 50 percent of the vote, Labour made history as the first party in the MMP era to win enough seats to govern alone.
Such lofty goals are all but impossible for Ardern’s successor, Chris Hipkins, as he scraps with National leader Christopher Luxon to secure office at this year’s election. But Labour or National could still make electoral history of a different sort come October 14.
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With ACT and Te Pāti Māori already threatening to shun coalition or confidence deals in favour of sitting on the cross benches, and the Greens demanding stronger climate action in exchange for any support, New Zealand could yet end up with a “true” minority government – one forced to barter for votes on every single piece of legislation or face oblivion.
“It may end up just being talk, but the talk is quite a lot tougher – and across the board as well,” says Victoria University of Wellington senior law lecturer Dr Eddie Clark of the current political rhetoric from the minor parties.
Multi-party governments may have become the norm under MMP, but Clark says New Zealand has avoided the situation seen in Canada and the United Kingdom, where a party has held power despite lacking the security of a stable majority across their entire term.
Experiences have varied: the UK held two elections within eight months in 1974 because of the instability of the minority Labour government, though Canada has had greater success in recent decades.
“It would go for 18 months or two years, get a couple of Budgets through before quite disparate opposition parties that didn't much like each other would decide, maybe we’re positioned OK for an election now,” Clark says.
“Does the government do a good job? Do they get to govern in the way that they want to? Or just fundamentally, nothing happens for years because … it was a vote by vote basis, but they could never get agreement to do anything and so nothing much changed.”
Minority government could in theory have some benefits for parties both big and small, as former UnitedFuture leader and government minister Peter Dunne points out in his weekly column for Newsroom.
“From the larger parties’ point of view, leading a minority government would enable them to get on with governing without having to worry about the day-to-day demands of support partners … [while] the crossbench parties would be able to hold firm to their own policy positions without the required compromise of being part of the government.”
But as Dunne also notes, there are downsides in the form of greater instability, particularly when it comes to passing the Budgets necessary to fund the government’s work.
Ultimately, says Wellington lawyer and electoral law expert Graeme Edgeler, it would be political rather than constitutional matters that would determine whether such an approach to government could win public support.
“Does the government do a good job? Do they get to govern in the way that they want to? Or just fundamentally, nothing happens for years because … it was a vote-by-vote basis, but they could never get agreement to do anything and so nothing much changed.”
There is another, even more chaotic possibility: a hung Parliament in which neither the left nor right ‘blocs’ can secure the majority of seats necessary to form government.
A dead heat in the House
Labour and National have been tied in two of the 20 public polls since Hipkins succeeded Ardern, and last month the NZ Herald’s poll of polls estimated a 12 percent chance of a hung Parliament on October 14.
Though the country was in a similar position after the 2017 election, as Labour and National waited for Winston Peters to decide where New Zealand First would throw its support, the absence of a similar ‘kingmaker’ this time around – and Luxon’s decision to rule out working with Te Pāti Māori – could throw a wrench into the works.
If the National-ACT and Labour-Green-Māori groupings secured 60 seats each, and neither bloc could peel MPs away from the other, the result could be a fresh election, Edgeler says.
Not that we would necessarily see a swift return to the polls: there would be no official ticking clock, with the trigger for a new election being pulled by the Governor-General only once the leaders of the major parties made it clear to the public that neither could form government.
Until that point, the previous government would continue to run the country in a caretaker capacity, with the biggest headache being the need to pass a new imprest supply bill (essentially, giving the government approval to spend money).
Belgium is believed to hold the world record for the longest time taken to form a new government, taking 541 days over the course of 2010 and 2011.
But much to the relief of those reading this, Edgeler says Kiwi politicians would have an incentive to act much sooner.
“If it's really 60-60 … and it's clear that neither side is going to support the other, then at some point, it just becomes obvious [a new election is needed].”
“I would be unsurprised if we end up, regardless of a left or right government, with a slightly different form of agreement between government parties than we've seen before – something a little more skeletal looking.”
- Dr Eddie Clark, Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand governors-general have recently made a tradition of outlining their views of the post-election process, and in a speech to electoral officers earlier this year Dame Cindy Kiro raised the possibility of both a true minority government and a Parliament where no government could be formed.
“Members of Parliament are responsible for resolving matters so that the Governor-General is never required to consider dissolving Parliament and calling an election without ministerial advice,” Kiro said, noting the incumbent prime minister would be expected to consult other parties and seek majority support for a fresh election.
Such a scenario remains exceedingly unlikely, given all that could transpire between now and election day – from the resurgence of New Zealand First to the rise of TOP or a National-Te Pāti Māori detente – while a minority government is also a long shot.
But though Clark agrees such “disaster scenarios” are improbable, he believes New Zealanders could yet see a new form of government.
“I would be unsurprised if we end up, regardless of a left or right government, with a slightly different form of agreement between government parties than we've seen before – something a little more skeletal-looking.”
